Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/250

238 of early impressions. At his first school one of the masters was the son of a missionary in South Africa. The stories he told of the wonders of that distant country took possession of the youthful fancy of his pupil, and turned his mind toward the land where he was to achieve such signal renown. Dr. Schweinfurth devoted himself from boyhood to the science of botany. He studied at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he took his degree as doctor of philosophy. In 1860, when about twenty-four years of age, his interest in Africa was intensified by the circumstance that a collection of plants from the region of the Nile was placed in his hands to arrange and describe. While engaged in this work, a yearning came over him to behold these plants in all their bloom and beauty in their native haunts, and so added an immediate stimulus to his life-long interest in that strange country. Accordingly, in 1863 he left Berlin for Egypt, and, after botanizing in the Delta of the Nile, along the shores of the Red Sea, in Abyssinia and Khartoom, for two years and a half, he went back to Europe with an empty purse and a splendid collection of plants, though obtained at the additional cost of repeated attacks of fever. But this expedition only whetted his appetite for African exploration, and he soon submitted to the Royal Academy of Science a plan for the botanical survey of the equatorial districts lying west of the Nile, portions of which were still wholly unknown. His proposals were accepted, and the expenses of the enterprise were met by the "Humboldt Institution of Natural Philosophy and Travels," in Berlin. In July, 1868, he again landed in Egypt, and in the first chapter of this work he records the incidents of his journey till his arrival at Khartoom. After a short delay he proceeded up the White Nile and Gazelle. He says:

As a result of this study, several pages are devoted to explanations of this river system and the topography of the swampy region of the Meshera, where he was compelled to linger through February and March, botanizing in swamps, wading among papyrus-clumps, and exposed to the dreaded malaria of this unhealthy region. His immunity from sickness he attributes in part to the three doses of quinine, of eight or nine grains each, which he took daily. Half the travelers who have ventured into these swamps have succumbed to fever. Here Miss Tunne's expedition suffered a loss of five out of its nine European members, and among them Dr. Steudner, the botanist of the expedition. Here Heuglin lost most of his time by continual relapses of fever. And in this region Le Saint, a French geographical explorer, had died a few months before. From this place he took his start for the interior. He thus describes his company: